Scent Memory
by Embolalia
Summary: At the end of Hiatus Part 2 , Ziva finds herself no longer able to suppress her emotional reaction to what has happened.


**Scent Memory**

Did you know that on some airlines, you can pay a fee and use the internet? So, I flew across the country earlier this week and as they had no movie, I re-watched both parts of _Hiatus _on my laptop! It didn't make much sense to me how Ziva could go from cool and collected to weepy quite so quickly. Here's my explanation...enjoy!

P.S. No, they're not mine.

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In the days since the explosion, Ziva had found tremendous relief in her training, had had little difficulty carrying on at her job, even while the others seemed to put their emotional reactions above their work. She had slipped, just for a moment, with Abby, but the tears that startled her after Abby and Ducky doubted her emotions told her she needn't question herself. And so she had remained calm, until now.

Of all the places and moments that she would have expected to derail her, Ziva would not have thought first of the hospital. Days earlier, standing outside the ship as she breathed deep to clear her sinuses of the reek of exploded flesh, she had been quietly proud to have survived the worst reminder.

Smell is the sense most closely tied to memory, Ducky had once lectured, and Ziva knew it was true. When she closed her eyes and thought of Tali's death, Ziva remembered the smoke in her eyes and the screams of pain only after the stench of burning meat and hair.

At the time, she was still in her first year of Mossad training. In the army, discipline was called for but if you could do your job under high stress, there was no attention paid to how you dealt with your emotions during your off hours. In Mossad, a higher level of impenetrability was required. There were no off hours, so there could be no outlet for emotion. So it was a problem that in the months after Tali died encounters with bomb victims left Ziva a nervous wreck.

In the end it had been Ari's efforts to force her to stay active and distracted in the hours and days after such events that had given Ziva the ability to suppress her emotions for longer and longer. She could remember the day she'd first been able to handle an explosion without reacting. The men who had died were soldiers, less upsetting to begin with than civilians since they had likely committed their own acts of war. After the bodies had been removed for burial and the scene swept for other bombs, Ziva went running. And then drinking. And then to sleep. And in the morning, she woke and showered and dressed and only as she entered headquarters to make her report did she think of what had passed the day before. She had never questioned that it was better to be so inured to violence until now, but she was still certain it made things easier.

Yet somehow she was not ready for this, for the cool rush of air conditioning as she entered the hospital that carried with it scents of jello and disinfectants and memories of sobbing beside a gurney in an emergency ward while Tali took her last breaths. Before she could stop them, tears were welling up behind her eyes, and her words to the nurse on duty emerged around a lump in the back of her throat. She paused outside Gibbs' door, angry at herself. She was not the sort of woman who would cry at a time like this, she never had been. Surely she had not changed so much. Less that a year ago, she had been a woman who could kill her own brother if she had to. For a moment Ziva wondered if she would still have the capacity to do that now.

A noise came from inside the room and Ziva returned to her purpose, taking a deep breath and opening the door.

She confronted Gibbs there in the dimness, reminding him of the pivotal event of their relationship, Ari's death. If her voice wavered as she thought of it, Ziva did her best to hold steady.

She could see the frustration in his eyes, the desire for memory. Ziva watched Gibbs' hands clench into fists and she knew suddenly what to do, knew which sense surely linked him most closely to his memories. She took his hand and smacked her head, and watched his eyes come alive with knowledge.

As he recovered, Gibbs pulled her hard against him, hugging Ziva to his chest, and after days away from him she discovered for the first time that she knew his scent distinctly, felt more secure and at ease as she inhaled the perfume of his skin than she had since the explosion. And before she could stop them, tears were falling from her eyes. Not out of grief, now, but relief.

Ziva breathed deep and slow as crying released the tension in her body. She still had to get him back to headquarters in time to stop terrorists, had to make sure he was fully recovered, but somewhere deep in her brain Ziva knew irrefutably that everything was and would be alright.


End file.
